Chapter 29

THE evening after the funeral, my young lady and I were seated in
the library; now musing mournfully - one of us despairingly - on
our loss, now venturing conjectures as to the gloomy future.

We had just agreed the best destiny which could await Catherine
would be a permission to continue resident at the Grange; at least
during Linton's life: he being allowed to join her there, and I to
remain as housekeeper. That seemed rather too favourable an
arrangement to be hoped for; and yet I did hope, and began to cheer
up under the prospect of retaining my home and my employment, and,
above all, my beloved young mistress; when a servant - one of the
discarded ones, not yet departed - rushed hastily in, and said
'that devil Heathcliff' was coming through the court: should he
fasten the door in his face?

If we had been mad enough to order that proceeding, we had not
time. He made no ceremony of knocking or announcing his name: he
was master, and availed himself of the master's privilege to walk
straight in, without saying a word. The sound of our informant's
voice directed him to the library; he entered and motioning him
out, shut the door.

It was the same room into which he had been ushered, as a guest,
eighteen years before: the same moon shone through the window; and
the same autumn landscape lay outside. We had not yet lighted a
candle, but all the apartment was visible, even to the portraits on
the wall: the splendid head of Mrs. Linton, and the graceful one
of her husband. Heathcliff advanced to the hearth. Time had
little altered his person either. There was the same man: his
dark face rather sallower and more composed, his frame a stone or
two heavier, perhaps, and no other difference. Catherine had risen
with an impulse to dash out, when she saw him.

'Stop!' he said, arresting her by the arm. 'No more runnings away!
Where would you go? I'm come to fetch you home; and I hope you'll
be a dutiful daughter and not encourage my son to further
disobedience. I was embarrassed how to punish him when I
discovered his part in the business: he's such a cobweb, a pinch
would annihilate him; but you'll see by his look that he has
received his due! I brought him down one evening, the day before
yesterday, and just set him in a chair, and never touched him
afterwards. I sent Hareton out, and we had the room to ourselves.
In two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and since then
my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I fancy he
sees me often, though I am not near. Hareton says he wakes and
shrieks in the night by the hour together, and calls you to protect
him from me; and, whether you like your precious mate, or not, you
must come: he's your concern now; I yield all my interest in him
to you.'

'Why not let Catherine continue here,' I pleaded, 'and send Master
Linton to her? As you hate them both, you'd not miss them: they
can only be a daily plague to your unnatural heart.'

'I'm seeking a tenant for the Grange,' he answered; 'and I want my
children about me, to be sure. Besides, that lass owes me her
services for her bread. I'm not going to nurture her in luxury and
idleness after Linton is gone. Make haste and get ready, now; and
don't oblige me to compel you.'

'I shall,' said Catherine. 'Linton is all I have to love in the
world, and though you have done what you could to make him hateful
to me, and me to him, you cannot make us hate each other. And I
defy you to hurt him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!'

'You are a boastful champion,' replied Heathcliff; 'but I don't
like you well enough to hurt him: you shall get the full benefit
of the torment, as long as it lasts. It is not I who will make him
hateful to you - it is his own sweet spirit. He's as bitter as
gall at your desertion and its consequences: don't expect thanks
for this noble devotion. I heard him draw a pleasant picture to
Zillah of what he would do if he were as strong as I: the
inclination is there, and his very weakness will sharpen his wits
to find a substitute for strength.'

'I know he has a bad nature,' said Catherine: 'he's your son. But
I'm glad I've a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and
for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff YOU have NOBODY to love
you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the
revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater
misery. You ARE miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil,
and envious like him? NOBODY loves you - NOBODY will cry for you
when you die! I wouldn't be you!'

Catherine spoke with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to have
made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and
draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.

'You shall be sorry to be yourself presently,' said her father-in-
law, 'if you stand there another minute. Begone, witch, and get
your things!'

She scornfully withdrew. In her absence I began to beg for
Zillah's place at the Heights, offering to resign mine to her; but
he would suffer it on no account. He bid me be silent; and then,
for the first time, allowed himself a glance round the room and a
look at the pictures. Having studied Mrs. Linton's, he said - 'I
shall have that home. Not because I need it, but - ' He turned
abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a
better word, I must call a smile - 'I'll tell you what I did
yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to
remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought,
once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again - it is
hers yet! - he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would
change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the
coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton's side, damn him! I
wish he'd been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull
it away when I'm laid there, and slide mine out too; I'll have it
made so: and then by the time Linton gets to us he'll not know
which is which!'

'You were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!' I exclaimed; 'were you not
ashamed to disturb the dead?'

'I disturbed nobody, Nelly,' he replied; 'and I gave some ease to
myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you'll
have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there.
Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through
eighteen years - incessantly - remorselessly - till yesternight;
and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last
sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen
against hers.'

'And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you
have dreamt of then?' I said.

'Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!' he answered.
'Do you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected such a
transformation on raising the lid - but I'm better pleased that it
should not commence till I share it. Besides, unless I had
received a distinct impression of her passionless features, that
strange feeling would hardly have been removed. It began oddly.
You know I was wild after she died; and eternally, from dawn to
dawn, praying her to return to me her spirit! I have a strong
faith in ghosts: I have a conviction that they can, and do, exist
among us! The day she was buried, there came a fall of snow. In
the evening I went to the churchyard. It blew bleak as winter -
all round was solitary. I didn't fear that her fool of a husband
would wander up the glen so late; and no one else had business to
bring them there. Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose
earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself - 'I'll
have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I'll think it is this
north wind that chills ME; and if she be motionless, it is sleep."
I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my
might - it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the
wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of
attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some
one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. "If I
can only get this off," I muttered, "I wish they may shovel in the
earth over us both!" and I wrenched at it more desperately still.
There was another sigh, close at my ear. I appeared to feel the
warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. I knew no
living thing in flesh and blood was by; but, as certainly as you
perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though
it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there:
not under me, but on the earth. A sudden sense of relief flowed
from my heart through every limb. I relinquished my labour of
agony, and turned consoled at once: unspeakably consoled. Her
presence was with me: it remained while I re-filled the grave, and
led me home. You may laugh, if you will; but I was sure I should
see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help
talking to her. Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to
the door. It was fastened; and, I remember, that accursed Earnshaw
and my wife opposed my entrance. I remember stopping to kick the
breath out of him, and then hurrying up-stairs, to my room and
hers. I looked round impatiently - I felt her by me - I could
ALMOST see her, and yet I COULD NOT! I ought to have sweat blood
then, from the anguish of my yearning - from the fervour of my
supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed
herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then,
sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the sport of that
intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch
that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have
relaxed to the feebleness of Linton's. When I sat in the house
with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I
walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from
home I hastened to return; she MUST be somewhere at the Heights, I
was certain! And when I slept in her chamber - I was beaten out of
that. I couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she
was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or
entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the same
pillow as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to see.
And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night - to be
always disappointed! It racked me! I've often groaned aloud, till
that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that my conscience was
playing the fiend inside of me. Now, since I've seen her, I'm
pacified - a little. It was a strange way of killing: not by
inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the
spectre of a hope through eighteen years!'

Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it,
wet with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the
fire, the brows not contracted, but raised next the temples;
diminishing the grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a
peculiar look of trouble, and a painful appearance of mental
tension towards one absorbing subject. He only half addressed me,
and I maintained silence. I didn't like to hear him talk! After a
short period he resumed his meditation on the picture, took it down
and leant it against the sofa to contemplate it at better
advantage; and while so occupied Catherine entered, announcing that
she was ready, when her pony should be saddled.

'Send that over to-morrow,' said Heathcliff to me; then turning to
her, he added: 'You may do without your pony: it is a fine
evening, and you'll need no ponies at Wuthering Heights; for what
journeys you take, your own feet will serve you. Come along.'

'Good-bye, Ellen!' whispered my dear little mistress.

As she kissed me, her lips felt like ice. 'Come and see me, Ellen;
don't forget.'

'Take care you do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!' said her new father.
'When I wish to speak to you I'll come here. I want none of your
prying at my house!'

He signed her to precede him; and casting back a look that cut my
heart, she obeyed. I watched them, from the window, walk down the
garden. Heathcliff fixed Catherine's arm under his: though she
disputed the act at first evidently; and with rapid strides he
hurried her into the alley, whose trees concealed them.